PAT BUCHANAN AT HIS MOST BUCHANAN-ESQUE…. This week, in a twisted piece for Human Events, Pat Buchanan encouraged the Republican Party to engage in more race baiting and insisted that the key to GOP success in the future is doing more to appeal to whites. In the context of this week’s events on the Hill, Buchanan urges Republicans to tell whites that “their sons and daughters are pushed aside to make room for the Sonia Sotomayors.”
Last night, Rachel Maddow hosted a lively chat with Buchanan about his advice to his party.
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The whole thing is worth watching, but I was especially struck, not just by Rachel’s composure in the face of ignorance and bigotry, but by Bachanan’s transparency. Rachel asked, for example, for his thoughts on 108 out of 110 Supreme Court justices being white. Buchanan replied, “White men were 100% of the people that wrote the Constitution, 100% of the people that signed the Declaration of Independence, 100% of the people who died at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, probably close to 100% of the people who died at Normandy. This has been a country built basically by white folks.”
Towards the end of the segment, Buchanan went after Rachel on a more personal level, suggesting she doesn’t know about the challenges facing working class people. (He obviously doesn’t know anything about her background.) She replied, “I don’t need a lecture from you about whether or not I know, what I think about working class Americans… For you to privilege race… and say that what we need to tap politically is white people’s racial grievance, you’re playing with fire and dating yourself.”
As I watched the interview, I was tempted to take notes to start debunking every bogus claim individually, but quickly realized that fact-checking Buchanan tirades is simply too daunting. The error-to-word ratio is overwhelming. That said, Media Matters did a nice job tackling some of Buchanan’s more obvious errors in his attacks on Sotomayor’s record.
